The Sky Has Red Wings
by YetAnotherWriter
Summary: Tama Maseo lives somewhere on the edge of existance. His city is choking him, his ex-wife torments him, and his job is killing him. There's no hope of relief until a strange girl on a Vespa appears. Love. Jealousy. Carnage. Furi...Kuri? (Updated!)
1. Just A Dream

I woke up at around midnight again. I'd been having trouble sleeping. Maybe all the coffee I drank in my entire life was finally catching up with me. But if that were true, I would've probably felt a bit more awake. Right then it felt like I was sleepwalking. Not the firm, solid feeling of being awake, and not the warm, relaxed release of sleep. I was stuck somewhere in limbo, which just happened to be worse than Heaven or Hell right now.  
  
I growled in frustration at one thing or another and pushed myself out of bed. The bedroom of my apartment was nothing more than a wooden box painted a sickly sort of light blue with hardwood floors so old that I can feel the spaces between them with my feet. The gaps cling to well-worn grooves in the pinkish flesh. It used to hurt, but it doesn't anymore. Enough of any one thing and you start to get dulled to it all. That's just the way it is, I guess.  
  
I also have one window in my room. Punched into the wall, a square of relief in the sticky-hot darkness of the room. I don't like to use the air conditioner. It's money so that I can put an extra cover over me while I sleep. What's the point? Anyway, the window spews a fountain of pale white light that's like a ghost's hand groping for me in the dark. I touch it, but all I feel is the cool flesh of the wind that weakly comes through the open window. Not groping for me. Not coming to take me away. There is no escape, is there?  
  
Out the window, the world is the same dark as I left it. The moon is lonely and pale in the darkness of the night sky like a lonely child, confused, sunken deep in despair. It offers just enough light for me to see across the city, hiding the sins and horrors of the world in the shadows, where no one would probably ever find out about them. A big, glowing, pale censor. It makes the city look almost nice. That takes some talent.  
  
And there on the hill gleamed a building, shimmering as if advertising how out of place it was amongst the looming, stolid blocky figures of the buildings around it. It gleamed gold even in the pale light, a flat, metallic gold. It was new, some sort of modern architecture. State-of-the-art, the papers said. Everyone was very excited about it. But now, it's gotten sort of dull, sort of accepted. People used to talk, it used to be almost a tourist attraction. Booths sold plastic replicas to walking wallets who weren't old enough to know useless junk when they saw it. To me, it just looked like a giant, golden iron, squatting uselessly on the hill that the city crowded around.  
  
The Medical Mechanica building. There was something funny to that. A squatting golden iron on the top of the hill above the city. As I watched it out my window, I secretly hoped it would tip and start sliding, flattening the city and knocking down buildings as it went. And then the buildings would knock down others. Like dominos. In a few short seconds, the city would be rubble. And all that would be left was that gleaming golden iron building sitting innocently amidst the destruction. The ruins that were a city. It's a neat dream, at least.  
  
"I need to get back to sleep." I say to the city, which only hums with electricity, ignoring me and my words as if neither of us existed. We might as well not. I took my words with me to bed. We comforted ourselves in sleep, with a small, secret hope that neither of us would wake up.  
  
I had a strange dream that night. I don't remember a lot of it. That's the way with dreams. And only with dreams. Stories you can remember, but dreams you can't. As if your mind wants them to be kept a secret, wants to keep them to itself. Anyway. I remember seeing the city, at night. And I remember seeing dawn start spreading swiftly across the sky, fingers like almost blood-red lightning bolts across the night. And I remember these fingers shifted and melded until it looked like they formed solid masses, like blood-red wings, that cut the night and dyed the world red. And slowly, the red grew brighter and brighter until my eyes seemed glazed by a glowing coat of blood. And then everything swirled together, red-tinged buildings, the sky, the wings, into a red tornado that tore my dream away from me and left me with blackness.  
  
When I woke up, I was covered in sweat. My clothes stuck to my lanky, thin body, melding like flesh onto me. And when I closed my eyes, all I could see was an odd symbol, like a circle with three sets of wings, appearing everywhere I looked as though it were a light I had stared at too long. And echoing in my ears was the calm, rumbling sound of some baseline I couldn't recognize played on an invisible bass moving farther and farther into the distance.  
  
"Just a dream." I might have mumbled it, I'm not sure. Either way, I got up like I did every morning and peeling my clothing away, shedding it and emerging pale and naked into the sickly, polluted light that dripping through the window. The cool breath of the wind sucked the sweat from my body and I watched as the gleam faded from my skin. Back to normal. 


	2. A Day In the Life

When I was a kid, I still lived in this city. My mother died giving birth to me, but I never knew that until I was old enough to know my dad's stories were all bullshit. He wasn't even really that good at them. I guess when you're a kid, knowing the truth means less. Or maybe you're smart enough to realize what kinds of truth are good for you. Whatever.  
  
I used to wander around by the river during the late afternoon. And when it got dark enough, I'd sneak over the wall that ran along the river and climbed down to the rocks and junk strewn along the shore like a line of faded memories at the bank of a river that's as much oil and decay as it is water. I liked to scavenge through the garbage and bring back souveniers. Thinking back, I'm surprised I didn't stumble on a dead body.or a live one, for that matter. But each day I'd sneak home and put my new treasure in a secret box inside my dresser. One day, the smell got so bad my dad found it and threw it out. After that, I stopped going to the river. It didn't seem worth it to start all over again.  
  
The water of the shower slips over me like cool little tongues, my own cool treasures kept secret from the heat of the city's summer. Washing away the wings, the symbol, the baseline, the whole damn world for the space of the time it takes me to shower. No matter how hard I try, I can't seem to change the amount of time I spend in the shower. It's always at the exact same time that the cool feeling loses is novelty and I begin to shiver. Even if I turn on the heat, then I feel too hot. It's like my body has evolved into my morning routine. I wonder.if I died would my body continue to go through the routine on its own?  
  
Five days a week, the post office is my home. Because, I mean, where you sleep isn't necessarily you home. It's where you exist most of the time. When I go home from work, I don't exist anymore. I don't drive a car, I don't even have the comfort of having an ability to cause an accident. All I am is another passenger on the subway. Another fare for the taxi driver. But when I go to work, I have a name. And an ID card. And a mail van and a few thousand of the same letters waiting impatiently to be delivered.  
  
The office was crowded that day. Everyone seemed to have come to work. It was a Friday, after all. Everyone wanted to act like they've been here all week. The supervisor was in for one of those rare times he checks to see no one is slacking off more than he is. He walks around, the gleam of his bald head like a siren going off, making everyone look more focused, more content and sickeningly polite. I punch in and he wades through an ocean of happy faces that revert back to normal as he passes, as if he's some wave of misery dissolving the masks his workers put on. He made his way towards me, but I tried not to make eye contact. That's death. Everyone who works here knows that.  
  
"Maseo!" His voice is about as low as his head. His short, squat body is heavy with muscle and fat, but the fat he's somehow managed to train to move in just the right way so that it looks like his arms are powerful when he folds them. He loves doing that. His wide brow is furrowed in some expression that involves narrowing his wet, dark eyes. "Just getting in?"  
  
"Yes, sir."  
  
He raises one bushy black eyebrow. "You always get in this time?"  
  
"This is the time I'm scheduled for, sir."  
  
I've had this conversation at least once every time he's in the office. It's always the same. He nods slowly, eyeing me pointedly. Then he says "Good, then, keep it up." And walks away with a strut that says 'I showed him.' I watched him go, a short, gleaming wave, light before him, dark behind.  
  
I became a postal worker because I was excited to see what my city really had in it. So, I guess it was travel. If you could call it that. Horizons are deceptively far. The walls of the city seemed like a whole different world from where I'd been all my life. The novelty wore off after a month. After a while, I started to recognize the same roads. I stopped getting lost in totally different worlds. Even the people started looking the same. I should never had attempted to reach the horizons. It made them too close. It made them so close sometimes I feel them around my neck, choking me. And sometimes, I feel like letting them.  
  
A million little white rectangles rain down on the office daily, a hail of words all typed in the same black font. All the same letter from where I stand. Most of the time, people don't bother writing return addresses. They put stickers on the corners of the envelope, stickers that must have all been made by the exact same company because they all look exactly the same. Not even the stamps have anything original about them. No one licks the backs of their stamps anymore. Everyone simply buys the sticky kind. And I wonder what's inside some of the envelopes. Not because it's a mystery or anything, but just to see if all the letters are exactly the same, just mailed so the post office will have something to do. So people like the supervisor have enough subordinates to feel important on a daily basis.  
  
"Hey Tama!" It's the kind of jittery, bouncing voice that can't be mistaken for any of the other drones around the office.  
  
"Hi, Karen." This woman, Karen, matches her voice precisely. A very businesswoman short blonde hairstyle, with glasses with wide lenses and a smile full of teeth bright enough to blind those who didn't know enough to not look directly into the face of useless glee. Her body was too barren and slim to ever be any more than a sack of flesh filling a blue uniform.and it didn't even do that well.  
  
"Didja hear, didja hear?" She says it twice, as if anyone couldn't pick up her high-pitched siren voice the first time.  
  
"What?" I pretended to be examining the box of deliveries for the day to avoid looking at her. Even so, the smile made me squint one eye.  
  
"Remember how the Medical Mechanica building was spewing that weird yellow fog yesterday?" It wasn't a question as much as a command.  
  
"Yeah, sure." I remembered it. I had been driving to one neighborhood or another and all of a sudden this hissing sound muffles the normal sounds of the city, the yelling, the honking, the endless rumble of car engines. I looked up and saw the Medical Mechanica building seem to explode in a burst of sickly yellow fog. The fog fluttered outward, flowing like water over the sky, underlining the pollution that already tainted it. It covered the city like a blanket, like a swirling yellowish cloud. For the rest of the day the city seemed to glow with an aura of pollution.  
  
"You do?" The smile widened and I pretend to be looking through the desk in front of me so I can turn my head further away. "Well, the EPA's having a fit!" She giggled one of those giggles that goes up at the end, like a question. "Saying Medical Mechanica has no right to pollute the city's air." A few more chuckles followed the statement. "Isn't that funny? Polluting the city, ha!"  
  
"Yeah, it's kinda ridiculous." I remember going to the mountains once. The air was so clean I almost choked. It was terrifying. It was the kind of air that no one had already taken into their body and blown back at you. It was raw.  
  
"Wanna know what the city's doing about it?" She literally shivered with anticipation.  
  
"If I say no, you're going to tell me anyway, so go ahead."  
  
The answer didn't phase Karen. Not like I thought it would. She spread her thin, arms suddenly. "NOTHING!" She giggled for a little while, as if she had just made a horribly funny joke. When she calmed down somewhat, she spoke again. "Isn't that great?"  
  
I shrugged. "I guess, if you can call it that." I picked up the box of deliveries and began the process of lugging it towards the garage, the bulky thing heavy with monotony.  
  
Karen's smile went away like the sun disappearing behind a cloud and she followed after me, her whole face and body focused on being genuinely concerned. "Something wrong, Tama?" When I didn't respond, the guessing began. "It's not something I said, is it?" I still wasn't responding. "Something happen last night?" No response. "Or this morning?"  
  
I let out a low grunt as I shifted the weight of the box, trying to hurry towards the garage before I dropped it. "Yeah, I woke up."  
  
A frown seemed frighteningly out of place on Karen's face. "Is it about Aya?"  
  
I froze. No, I told myself, don't think about it, don't think about her, don't let yourself. But it was already too late. Aya Furihame. My ex-wife. 


	3. Running Through Fire

I'd known Aya since I was a kid. She moved into the city when I was about eight years old. Something about her mother and father wanting to be closer to their jobs. And since they pretty much were at their jobs all day, it got rid of the inconvenience of having to actually travel to a home where they'd just go in, go to bed, sleep and come back in the morning. It got rid of the inconvenience of "home". They might as well have set up little houses in their cubicles.  
  
But Aya didn't care. She was like that. For as long as I'd known her, she didn't let things get to her. It wasn't that she was grounded or something, because even when something completely absurd struck her, it didn't phase her. And it wasn't that she was apathetic, because she knew what was going on.  
  
When we were kids, we were best friends. I remember how I met her, which is probably one of my oldest memories and probably the only memory I can remember in so much detail. I remember it was sometime in late afternoon and I was walking out alone in the city, painted a dramatic red- orange color, as if the whole of it were on fire, yet it never burned down. A flame that didn't burn. The sun was dying behind a jagged horizon of buildings that looked like the lower jaw of some dark-lipped beast. For some reason, I found myself walking towards the water, towards the gray stone wall that shielded the cracked pavement of the sidewalk from the dark eternity of oil-tainted water. The water clutched at the light of the setting sun, holding it close, trying to remember what it felt like to be natural again, not full of the debris of mankind.  
  
I folded my arms on top of the wall, which was a little shorter than my height at the time and put my head in my arms, looking out over the water. The city continued there, as if it never stopped. I wondered if someday people would build buildings on the water. So that nobody had to know that anything natural could cut such a wound into the urban sprawl.  
  
When I looked down, I suddenly noticed a slender girl with shoulder- length deep black hair making her way awkwardly along the shore, surrounded by broken bottles and faded newspapers that hid the dark, moldy rocks beneath. Her skin was a bright pale, gleaming faintly like the oncoming moon against the darkness it trailed with it. She wore a somewhat short dark gray skirt that danced with her jerky movements, and a tight, long- sleeved black turtleneck. Her body looked about my age, but her face was so focused and concentrated I wondered how old she really was.  
  
"Hey! Hey, you down there!" I tried not to yell too loud, because I didn't want to call attention to us, two kids on the shore of tainted waters.  
  
She stopped suddenly and looked up, thin black eyebrows raised, but without a look of surprise on her face. Her face was somewhat round, and her eyes had long, dark lashes that seemed to melt into the deep black pools of her eyes. "Yeah? What?" Her voice was smooth and sultry, like that of an older woman.  
  
I forgot what I was going to say, looking at her that way. "Umm.what are you doing?"  
  
"What does it look like?" She turned back to picking her way along, stumbling a bit.  
  
"Tripping over rocks." I smiled.  
  
She scoffed. "Yeah, I'd like to see you do any better."  
  
"Easy." With that, I threw myself over the wall and landed expertly on the rocks. I'd been down there before. I just never thought much of it until I saw the black-haired girl. Of course, it made it a little easier that I was wearing sneakers and she was wearing black formal shoes with one- inch heels. I easily made my way to her and grinned widely into her face, which split with a half-smile. "How about that?"  
  
"Pretty good." She tilted her head, her dark hair rolling like waves to the side and her hand moving to rest on her hip. "How about a race?" Her little half-smile was dangerous, like the edge of a knife.  
  
I got myself at the ready, taking the same stance I'd seen a runner take on TV. "You're on."  
  
((I recommend the song by the Pillows called Advice for this part.))  
  
She grinned still wider and readied herself as well. "On three, okay?" I nodded. "All right. One." I felt my muscles twitch under the stress. "Two." I looked over at her. She was smiling wickedly, and her dark eyes sparkled like little black stones. "Three!"  
  
Both of us dashed off. The newspapers exploded with our footfalls, splattering like blood against the walls, revealing foot-shaped portions of rotting black stone. Bottles skittered out of the way, some flying ahead of us, some flying behind, some disappearing into the water, which seemed to suddenly kick up, as if trying to grab us with its diseased black hands. She moved surprisingly fast, her slender white legs pumping with almost as much force as mine. We dashed towards the rusted dark metal of the bridge far in the distance, feeling the ground rise and fall wildly beneath us.  
  
The world flew by in a blur of gray and flame. The sun cast a last burning spotlight on us, throwing our dancing shadows like scorched bodies onto the flaming gray wall to our side. Glass tore our shoes, stone pounded our feet, sweat flew in little wet explosions in every direction, bursting from our glistening skin. Our breath flew uselessly from our body, used and discarded.  
  
Suddenly, the rocks dipped sharply and the water filled the gap. Both of us tried to stop, but our momentum carried us full into the filthy water of the short gap. The loud crash of the breaking water ended the race like a gunshot would have started it. We both struggled out of the muck, finding a place to collapse amidst the gleaming sharp teeth of broken bottles all around us. The smell of decay and sweat, the smell of death and life, they mingled in the air as we gazed up at the sky, the light losing the war against the dark of night. Both of us were soaked with oil, water, blood, tears and whatever else was cast down into that tortured river.  
  
She sighed happily and turned to me, a few specks of dirt and wet strands of hair cutting into the pale moon of her features. She held out a dripping, dirty hand for me to take. "I'm Aya Furihame."  
  
I looked at that hand for some time before smiling and taking it, the filth on both of our hands mixing and dripping off together. "Tama Maseo."  
  
She smirked that same wicked smirk, her dark red lips like blood on the edges of the knife of her smile. "Nice to meet you." 


	4. The Vespa Woman

The roads in the city are kind of like black rivers. I mean, they have their little irregularities, the potholes and the cracks. But the irregularities stay so long in these roads they become part of daily routine. I know if I pass down this street, right in the middle, the mail van will dip and then rise suddenly. And I know that someday that hole will seem to heal by it self. And I know I probably won't notice. I guess in that case, the roads are like black flesh, cuts frozen in it until it heals over and no one notices it again. The fading memory like a faint scar.  
  
My job is to distribute other people's words. Not my own, but other people's hopes and dreams and money and such. I'm given a box of words that aren't my own and I have to handle them with all possible care until they end up in the mailbox of some unknown stranger. And my own words? Swept away by the night wind, I suppose. Hiding, secret in my bed. Lost somewhere amongst the trash by the banks of the river.  
  
I used to love the city because everyone looked different. But that's usually only at night. And the only reason they look different is because only the trash of the city walks, like the living dead, heads down as if their living is some grievous sin against the world. And at night, everything is black. The whole world is scorched after burning all day. And so everything looks black. During the day, the city is the same two- piece suit in two different colors stretched across maybe three different body types. I don't know what I used to see in the city. It's like thinking about an old girlfriend and wondering why you ever wasted your time. And the fading memory of romance is a faint scar on your hardened mind.  
  
My route changed that day. The city was choking me to the point that I though I'd faint away any second. I decided to take a somewhat longer route, going right past the Medical Mechanica building. I thought that maybe looking at the gleaming golden monstrosity would release me of the choking dust over every idea the city holds. That maybe that ugly, misplaced hunk of metal would be my savior. I felt the relief already as I gazed up at it. The sun framed it in golden rays, making it seem to emit a golden aura that even infected a few of the buildings around it. The other buildings' windows were like mirrors, and I found myself surrounded by golden irons, all exact copies of one another, all seeming just as dream- like as the original.  
  
Suddenly, my eyes caught on something. A shadow outlined sharply against the sickly bright horizon. It looked something like a person, though I couldn't see clearly. The shadow stood atop the handle of the giant iron, looking like she was standing as Aya had that day, one hand on her hip, head tilted slightly. I gazed in awe at the shadow, not knowing exactly why, until a loud honk from behind me shattered my blank trance and made me drive onward. The golden iron, the shadow and the glass mirrors all around it faded into the distance behind me, and I wondered if anyone else would gaze into the dark depths of the shadow and be frozen like I had been.  
  
The shadow haunted my mind for the rest of the day. I'm not exactly sure why. Maybe it was because her stance looked so much like Aya's. And when I thought that, I felt the city tighten its grip and felt my heart grow so heavy I thought it would sink down and out of my body. Which might have been better for me. At least that way I wouldn't have to deal with the pain of my body trying to keep it in place. I could survive without it. My mind could go too. All I needed to do was do my job. I had yet to find another purpose that needed anything human to exist inside me.  
  
I got off from work with an exaustion that wasn't just physical. My mind had spun dizzily all day, drilling itself deep into a darkness I didn't think would end. It was funny how every memory I had of Aya had curdled, like milk, when we broke up. It was hysterical. I felt something inside me laughing. It was the sort of thing that takes over when your mind finally gives up the struggle against insanity. And then you start to laugh. When the stiff rod of stability shatters, all that's left to do is laugh and laugh. Not because you're happy. But because you're too empty to know what else to do.  
  
When I got home, all I could see in my house was my bed. It drew me towards it, swallowed me up, bathed me in dark dreams and sweat. Dreams of the Medical Mechanica building, gleaming gold all around me, and the shadow, Aya, gazing down at me silently, like some black raven perched symbolically out of reach. And all at once, a hissing sound filled deathly silence of the dream, yellow smoke spewing from the polished gold form, shooting outward like fireworks, trailing curling tongues of dirty yellow across a reddish sky. But the smoke didn't hide the shadow. It only brought it out, made it darker, made it sharper. And for a second, I thought I saw it smile.  
  
The baseline hummed in my head as I awoke. It was night, I had missed watching the flames of evening scorch the city. All that was left was smoking corpses. I had missed the daily end of the world.  
  
Without thinking, I picked up my phone from somewhere in the darkness that threatened to choke the life out of me as slowly as possible. Without remembering the number, I dialed it. The ringing was like laughter, mocking me, mocking the sweating, panting me, mocking the me that would call the number.  
  
The laughter cut short. "Yeah?" The voice was as smooth, as sensual as ever.  
  
"Aya?" As if it was someone else.  
  
There was a pause. My chest let out a faint pain. "Tama.what is it?"  
  
I sighed. "That's friendly of you." I let myself sink back into my pool of sweat.  
  
She scoffed. "Well, we didn't exactly end our last meeting on a good note."  
  
"Just because we got in a fight doesn't mean we'll never talk again." I try to keep the pleading sound out of my voice.  
  
"You know I don't think that." I could almost hear her roll her eyes. "If that were true, we'd have stopped talking a LONG time ago."  
  
"You're in a good mood today." It hurt my heart to beat.  
  
A low growl came from the phone. "Fuck you, Tama." She let out a quick breath. "I don't need your sarcasm today, I really don't."  
  
I closed my eyes. My eyes were cold against my warm eyelid. "Sorry."  
  
A slow sigh breathed out of the phone. I sniffed quick to see if I could smell her breath. "It's all right. I'm not in a good mood, you're right." She let out a soft groan and I could imagine her stretching her ivory-skinned body out across her messy little apartment. "Look, I'll see you tomorrow, okay? Normal place. Normal time. All right?"  
  
"Yeah, sure." Café Gazo, seven pm. We are creatures of habit. "Bye." I made sure the word was sharp, cold, like an icicle.  
  
"Bye, Tama." My name was interrupted by a click.  
  
The phone slipped from my hand. I heard it bang against the floor and hang there. I lay in my own sweat until the phone started letting out the pulsing noise that grew louder and softer as the phone bounced excitedly on the end of the white coil cord. The noise cut into the darkness, cut into my mind, cut into my body, stabbing me slowly to death as I felt my body tense and begin to shake. The little rod of stability was a brittle, brittle thing. The phone struck blow after blow to it.  
  
Finally, I felt something explode, like a gunshot in my mind, shattering everything and making my body burst into action, jerking wildly out of bed like a puppet on invisible strings. My rage moved me, I grabbed the bloated beige form of my phone and tore it viciously from the wall, throwing it hard across the room, into the shadows. The darkness engulfed it and I heard a crash and a ringing sound as the phone let out a short death cry and clattered noisily to the ground. But I ignored it. I was busy knocking the table that had held it to the side, the wooden edge clashing with the hard wood floor and a small lamp positioned on top of the table seeming to float in midair for a few seconds before coming crashing to the ground, sending shards of glass like little sparkling diamonds, like little stars into the air and clattering across the floor.  
  
It was over in a few seconds. I stood, breathing, sweating heavily, my eyes glaring into the sparkle of the shards of glass. My floor was dark like a night sky and the glass twinkled like stars. For the first time in a while, I was gazing into a clear night sky. Only this time I was above it. Maybe people have got it reversed. Maybe Heaven is the one that's underground.  
  
I had to get out of the house. I had to run. I had to run until I was so exausted that my heart and my mind would be too busy keeping me alive to give me pain. I needed to kill both of them, and I needed to do it fast. Without allowing my mind a second thought, I dashed off, flying down stairs out into the street. The cool, recycled air of the city dried the water from my sweat, leaving the salt and waste like a crust over my skin. But I didn't stop, I ran onward, feeling my feet smash against the ground again and again, moving like they never had since Aya, since that woman who faded from my mind, faded from my heart as both struggled to keep up with my body's pace. The world flew by, and even the night dwellers raised their heads from out of the shadow to watch me fly by, wondering whether or not they should be doing the same thing.  
  
Without knowing it, I had somehow brought myself to the river, to the gray wall overlooking it, dragging my body kicking and screaming across endless blocks. The river beckoned me, and I knew I could simply jump over that wall and it would all be over. I'd be floating in a sea of blood, the blood of man and machine, the tears of man and machine. I'd find friends amongst what mankind discarded.  
  
But my energy was spent. I was limping by the time I made it to the wall. I doubt I could even have pulled myself over the wall, dragged my dying carcass under the waves. I slumped against the wall and buried my face in my hands. My whole body cried tears of sweat, trying frantically to cool me down. But I knew it was hopeless. I'd never cool down. I'd always be this close to death. I was bleeding on the inside. The flesh only healed over the outer scars. The inner wounds simply stayed broken, unfixed.  
  
And I would have stayed there, my sweat making a wet chalk outline of my body against the wall. I would have stayed there had I not heard the low growl of an engine, rumbling like an earthquake across the ground, and into my body. The engine roared and I felt my heart tremble. I raised my sweat-soaked head to gaze through black bangs at what was coming towards me.  
  
The dust of the city flew up in a cyclone, even picking up cars and flipping them over, a tornado of destruction, tearing moldy newspapers from the riverbanks and spinning them about wildly, like dancing figures, like paper flames. And it all blew up in a billowing, dirty cloud behind a gleaming yellow vehicle that looked like a cross between a scooter and a motorcycle. Gleaming like the Medical Mechanica building, spewing dirty smoke behind it, flying through the night, glinting viciously with each streetlight it whipped past.  
  
The rider of the storm wore a gray helmet with a black streak over the center, going back, disappearing into the cyclone of debris that clawed at her back. Beneath the helmet peeked dancing strands of light peach, glinting and swaying in the night like the paper flames that circled, dreamlike, behind her. Her outfit glowed in the night, a day-glo orange sleeveless jacket with a black zipper and tight black pants. Her long, slender white arms ended in black gloves that gripped the black handles of her vehicle tight as she leaned forward into the wind.  
  
I watched as one hand seized a glinting blue handle that jutted out at a diagonal to her neck, looking as though it were some gem-glazed hilt of a hidden sword. A perfect arch of brilliant blue extended from her helmet and ended abruptly pointing towards the horizon that had long ago swallowed the sun. Pointing now to some sparkle I could probably have seen had the smog of the city not shut out all light. The arch ended and a gleaming blue bass took form at the end of that white arm, the edges of it glinting like the blades of a sword. The weapon purred, a soft twin to the roar of the oncoming vehicle, growing so loud that I felt my body shake with it. As she drew nearer, I heard her yell over the chaos, the crashing of cars, the roar of the wind, her vehicle and the bass that she held at the end of her thin white arm. The voice matched the storm, wild, with the same laughter my sanity had tried to stifle inside me ringing free in each windblown word.  
  
"ALL RIGHT! Rooooooooound one!" 


	5. Round One

"This is a dream," I could barely hear myself whisper over the noise, "This has got to be a fucking dream."  
  
But as the heavy stench of burning rubber and gasoline began to become more and more real, I realized it wasn't. The smell and the noise filled my body until I felt as though that was all that was left of me, a pile of noise and air pollution. I felt as though I didn't exist enough to ever be able to move myself out of the way of the oncoming vehicle. The rider's eyes were hidden behind a mask of fire-orange, wreathing the front of her face in flames with each streetlight nearer she came. I was a deer caught in the headlights of something I could never understand. Bearing down on me. Closer, closer.  
  
With a strength that wasn't my own, I flung myself away from the wall, tumbling into the street as the vehicle shot by, the cyclone tossing my limp, wet body around like a doll, like a puppet on strings. I felt the winds of it, the filthy claws of it, tearing at my body for one nightmarish second before the whole of it passed into the darkness from whence it came.  
  
I lay, huddled in a ball of dirt and sweat at the side of the sidewalk, my eyes shut tight, my hands on my ears, trying to block out the bitter reality that blared all about me. But no matter how tightly my hands clasped my ears, I couldn't shut out a loud squeal that cut through the air, like the dying cry of an animal caught by the cyclone-rider. I wondered if that was a sound I made. I wondered if maybe she had hit me, that my soul had been flung away from the wall instead of my body.  
  
The sound of metal rending against the asphalt of the road followed the squeal, the hiss of sparks punctuating it, underlining it. The vehicle skidded across the ground, riderless, robbed of its cyclone, spewing a rain of sparks into a thick night air. I looked up to see the rider land noiselessly in the middle of the road, the blue bass swept back, the other hand on her goggles, the black glove shielding all that was human about her upper face from view. Her thin lips were snakes, curved upward, trying to hypnotize me before they struck. The snakes spread and I thought I saw gleaming ivory fangs beneath them.  
  
"Common, don't make this harder on both of us!" The voice shook, unstable, unpredictable.  
  
With that, she dashed forward, almost as fast as she had on her bike. Her slender, sinewy black fabric-skinned legs pumping wildly against the empty street. I watched her run in awe, watching as her whole form seemed to blur with her speed, watching as reality seemed to sweep out of the way to let her through. When she drew close, she slammed her legs against the ground and propelled herself upward, seizing the bass with both hands and swinging it, like an axe, down towards my head.  
  
Either my body or my soul rolled out of the way, and the bass hummed a low, angry note as it struck the road. Instead of shattering, the bass remained intact, but the road buckled with the force, cracking and sending shards of black flying upward. My jaw fell open as I staggered backward, gazing in awe at the bass, not even scratched by the attack.  
  
"This HAS to be a dream." I mumbled.  
  
The rider let out a short laugh as she slowly straightened, her eyes invisible behind their glinting shield of flame, looking more like a machine than anything human. Her smile expanded until I could clearly see the points of her fangs glinting like white daggers in the apathetic hum of the electric streetlight.  
  
"Izzat so?"  
  
With a flash of motion, she drew the bass back, gripping it tightly in one black-skinned hand.  
  
"Then how about I wake you up, hmm?" The voice was the voice of a cat toying with her prey.  
  
I stumbled backward, my footsteps awkward versions of the steady stomps of her boots, which seemed to echo for miles, or at least enough to send a shockwave through my body. I backed away, she advanced, the indestructible bass jutting steadily out behind her, us acting out the dance of man fleeing from death. I jumped slightly as I felt the familiar cold, rough surface of the concrete wall at the riverside stop my escape and send a sudden panic fluttering like a caged bird through me. The bird pounded wildly against the bars. Against reality. Against the injustice of being killed by a woman who seemed to break all rules of that reality.  
  
I swallowed, hard. "Wh-Who are you?"  
  
The snakes slithered into a half-smile. "Me?" The voice attempted to hide her internal laughter behind a flimsy mask of innocence.  
  
Her free hand flew in a flash to grip the handle of the bass, and the mask burned away with the fire that I thought I could see flicker within the darkness of her mouth.  
  
"Just call me the Sandman!"  
  
I watched the perfect, gleaming blue arch of her swing extend from behind her, extend like an impossible rainbow across the thick black night. It cut through it like a knife, and all the darkness receded before it. It was like the sun at dawn. And it ended abruptly, ending on the same, rumbling note that was the only thing that accompanied me as I descended into a darkness deeper than the night. The note wasn't loud or anything, and the blow wasn't painful. I just slipped away on it, like gliding on a gentle breeze. I followed it as it faded. And I didn't really mind when it faded. Because I faded at the same time.  
  
***  
  
"It's raining, Aya." I had said, sitting beside her, my eyes to the sky, which answered my thoughtful look with droplets that burst and shattered on my clear white face.  
  
She looked at me, the flawless pearl of her eyes corrupted with red, small droplets frozen in well-worn paths on her cheeks. "Yeah?" Her body shuddered with another sob and she managed to give me a quizzical look. "So?"  
  
"So.why cry?" I smiled at the sky and felt the water seep between my teeth and disappear. I turned to her, with that same smile. "The rain'll just wash it all away."  
  
The moon of her face turned to look downward, thick clots of her black hair cutting into the white and the shadow of her head closing off the rest. "Everything washes away eventually..." Her words shook with sobs and her body was tight and closed.  
  
"That's the future." I kept smiling that same smile, feeling the water slide around it, wreathing it in a cool wetness. "Why worry about that?" I turned to look back to the sky, closing my eyes and feeling my face covered with a liquid mask, glazing over all my features. "Right now, if I smile, the rain won't wash it away."  
  
I heard her turn to look at me, heard the creak of her polished leather jacket. "Tama."  
  
I turned and saw her, black hair clinging to the gentle glow of her face, cutting fantastic shadow-shapes into it. The moon, peeking for a moment from behind the thick black storm cloud let it gaze fall softly onto her face, making her tear-stained eyes gleam like jet-black pearls floating in a pool of red and white. Her lips spoke without moving and the dark space between me drew me in like an abyss of unknown depths.  
  
And that was the first time we kissed. The sound, the smell of rain crisp, filling the city, cleaning the filth from the air for the space of a night, so that young lovers might draw on the intoxicating breath of life, clear and pure.  
  
***  
  
When I woke up, I figured I must have been right. I was back in my bed, still swimming in sweat, still with the same sound and same symbol smouldering lightly in my mind. I wondered if I had even called Aya at all. Maybe I had dreamt it. Maybe I had dreamt the whole strange day. Maybe I had dreamt my whole life. Maybe I was still a child, full of the misconception that life held some secret. Full of that promise that would never be fulfilled. Wishful thinking.  
  
"What a weird dream." I smiled and closed my eyes, reaching a hand up to wipe the sweat from my forehead. "I have to stop eating pizza before I go to-"  
  
My mouth rumbled onward, though no sound came out. My hand hadn't made it to my forehead. It stopped, maybe a foot from it, resting on a sweat-slickened object, hard as bone, seeming to be covered in flesh. My eyes went wide and I slowly looked upward. There, at the edge of my vision, I saw the edge of a rectangular block with sharp, defined edges covered in skin the same color as my own. My hand quivered, probing slowly down the object like a blind animal, my mind stunned out of thought. At the base, a smooth slope connected the object to my skull.  
  
"What.the.hell?" My words a whisper to a careless night. 


	6. A Problem

(Sorry about the delay. I'm.well.in college. So you'll all have to deal. Thanks for the reviews.)  
  
Daylight came like an unwelcome stranger into the room, like a flood of glory that could not be dammed, that could not be held back. Daylight came like the tide against the sand. It didn't wash anything away. It just kind of stirred things up.  
  
I had been awake all night. How could I have slept? Would you sleep with a giant block jutting out of your forehead? Surprisingly, it didn't weigh me down. It didn't even feel unnatural. It felt as though it had been there all the time and I just hadn't been observant enough to notice it. And that's entirely possible. I know my face enough already. I don't really need a mirror anymore. I can just look at a blank wall and envision my face, white, thin, sharp-boned. Thin lips and dark eyes. I wonder if I could try imagining someone else. That without a mirror I could be someone else. But then I can't think of anyone I'd want to be. Not that I'm satisfied. But when you've been looking down so long it's hard to lift your head up.  
  
I'd found that if I didn't touch it, it didn't hurt. It didn't cause me any pain. It didn't cause me any discomfort. So long as I kept it hanging free in the air and kept my hands away. But that wasn't going to happen. Every moment it hung there, a foreigner on my own body, I needed to touch it, I needed to check if it was still there. I needed to see if it was real. And each pain was like pinching myself. And I wasn't waking up. I started wondering if all my dreams hadn't been dreams at all. If maybe they had really happened.  
  
It was something I didn't understand, something I couldn't understand. My mind searched the dusty files of high school biology and found nothing. But that didn't mean it was impossible. It just meant that my job as a postal worker hadn't exercised my mind in as long as I can remember. Or maybe even that's not true. If I can't remember high school biology, how can I remember my own life?  
  
It was new, it was disturbing. Now I knew what made people so conservative. Change was frightening. Change was something that the lazy and apathetic couldn't handle, especially when that change affected them. It was something they had to think about, something they had to deal with. It was a bump in the steady, straight, smooth, dull road of life. Or a sharp turn. And what it lead to could just be more straight streets, quiet faces and empty rooms. Or it could be something endlessly more terrifying. My head had changed, and I was far from prepared to accept it as reality.  
  
I considered calling a doctor. Or going to the hospital. But as I was, I just couldn't do it. I couldn't bring myself to go outside. To face the stares, to face the people whispering about me or talking to me. I couldn't face the possibility that I might exist in the crowd. It was a terrifying thought.  
  
There was no other option. I'd just have to hide, huddled and afraid, in my apartment until it went away. Or until I wasted away. A pile of bones with a shape I couldn't figure out jutting out of my skull. Maybe no one would ever notice. Maybe I'd fade from existence like a cloud of dust on the wind. Like the steam out of the Medical Mechanica factory. Removed, incomprehensible, alone.  
  
I lay back in bed, tightening the muscles in my neck, for it seemed my head had gotten heavier. My mind knew that that's how it was supposed to be, and that's what it became. The weight of my thoughts helped. My head was saturated, filled with a shivering, cowardly anxiety that ate away at my insides, giving me the feeling that I had just eaten a meal that was too heavy for my stomach to handle.  
  
I turned my head to see the wreckage of last night. It all seemed so far away now. I should have just stayed in bed. I should have just gone to sleep. Then I never would have run into the deep, dark, discomfort of the outside world. I could lose myself in the discomfort of my own world. Where I knew what tortures awaited me and welcomed them with open arms.  
  
Then suddenly it hit me. Why I had gotten out of bed in the first place. What had made me litter the floor with star-like shards of broken glass, what had made me tear the phone from the wall with a strength I didn't think I had. And the answer to these questions was the answer to a lot of things that fluttered like fleeting birds of prey through my mind.  
  
"Aya." I whispered, but the darkness of my room could really care less.  
  
I was supposed to meet her that day. That very night. I was supposed to emerge, a supernatural being, from the comforting loneliness of my apartment into the savagery of shocked faces and sharpened fingers. I was supposed to sit, a freak-show free of charge, the wound of the night naked and exposed to all the world. To Aya. Who would see nothing but the mark. Who would see it and turn away. Who would see it and never see me again. I felt the muscle of my heart go so tight I had to grab my chest to keep it down, to keep it from bursting forth in a spray of red and flesh that was the only thing that stood between me and death.  
  
The thing that chewed away at my insides took another bite, and my head throbbed a bit. It felt as if the protrusion had gotten bigger. And the bigger it got to my mind, the more I hated it. I put my hand on it, scowling darkly at the tip, which was all I could see, blotting out the light to my face, bathing me in a shadow I didn't deserve. A stigma I hadn't earned. My hand tightened without me even knowing it. The pain didn't phase me. The image of the crowd, of Aya, was too much. Of all the things I'd done at our meetings, missing them was not one of them. And my mind would rather end my life than change it.  
  
The hand shook violently, fighting with the urge to tear the protrusion from my forehead, to rip it savagely from the fleshy bonds that were as fragile as that which held my hand to my arm. That held my arm to my body. My head to my body. And all these bonds felt more and more fragile. I felt like I was coming apart at the seams. I didn't realize the pain in my head was what shattered my sensations. If I had, I might have stopped.  
  
With a howl of frustration, pain and anger, I shoved the protrusion towards my head, trying to pop it, trying to break it, trying to crush it out of existence. My palm slammed hard against my flat forehead and I cried out with a shock of pain that went up a few thousand volts as my hand bounced away and the protrusion shot forth again. I sat there, feeling the pain, like an ocean tide, sweeping up and down my body. Parts of me didn't throb. I, as a being, throbbed.  
  
It took me a while before what happened finally made sense in a mind that struggled for air in a sea of emotions whose shallows were all I could probe into, all I could put into order from the chaos. Label and file. The protrusion had been gone for a split second. My hand had touched a forehead free of protrusions, the forehead, the flat, smooth, pale forehead of a life that felt dreamed, surreal.  
  
Slowly, braving the pain that still echoed across the hollows that had already been eaten through my body, I raised my hand to rest on the protrusion once more.  
  
"Everything else doesn't make sense." I thought slowly, anxiously. "Why wouldn't this work?"  
  
With that, I took in a quick breath and pushed the protrusion slowly downward. To my surprise, it gave, the hard, bone-like shape sinking swiftly into the smooth, calm, glistening ocean of my flesh. Within seconds it was gone. I was a human being again. My head still throbbed, but the shape was gone. I tried to repress the urge to burst out of bed and cheer. My body shook with delight. For a second, I wondered if I really did hate the protrusion, because if I hadn't had it, I probably wouldn't have felt so much joy. Is the problem worth the relief of a solution?  
  
I struggled into a sitting position, my clothes and body covered with the stale sweat I carried with me out of my dreams. The window blew a remorselessly warm air through the dirty screen. I looked out into the daytime of the city, my city, out across it, out far into the distance, where the Medical Mechanica building sat ready to burn the city off the face of the Earth. Ready to iron out all the wrinkles humanity had created in a perfect, natural world. My hand clasped over my wound suddenly lost its grip as I saw, even from so far away, the same shadow standing proud on the tip.  
  
The protrusion burst majestically forth, my skin molding to fit it snugly, as if it had never been gone. Through the pain that blurred my vision I watched the shadow. For some reason, it felt like it was looking at me. 


	7. Dinner Guest

I had some desperate thought that maybe, just maybe, if I got outside, if I felt the cool, dirty breath of city at dawn, I might somehow be cured. I might somehow stop feeling so nauseous, so confused, so lost. It was some vain effort of my mind, fevered as it was, not yet able to give up on false hope in miracles. I managed to keep the protrusion hidden beneath an old baseball cap, with edges worn and peeling. I hadn't worn it since the last time I'd been to a baseball game. One of the last times I did something other than just try to survive.  
  
The door stood between me and the real world. Everyone's faced with something like this at least once. They see the door, but they don't see the knob. They don't see a way out. All they see is something in their way, some obstacle they have to overcome. And everyone is tempted at least once to just turn back. Try again tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. But the air in my apartment was stuffy, and smelled of sweat and panic. One more moment in there and I think I would have suffocated. And of all the ways I thought I would die, that was one I would not accept. Dead and deformed, lying like a useless lump of flesh on the hard wood floor of my living room.  
  
So I pushed myself outside, or the outside pulled me into it. The sun stabbed and slashed at me, the wind splayed the skin of sweat I clung to and tore it savagely from my body, leaving me uncovered in a world I didn't own, in a world I didn't control. My hand went almost instinctively to my hat and I tugged on the brim slightly, letting the shadow hide my eyes from the sun's knives. Taking in a breath of air that froze my lungs and scratched my throat, I walked stiffly forward, my legs sore from the night before, my hand on my hat.  
  
As shady as I must have looked, I blended right in. Even in the daytime, there are those that flicker through the crowd like weak flames, trying to cover, to smother themselves. The world is too much for them, and they huddle in the quasi-security of their possessions. Everyone does it. The more you own, the more successful you are. I think my dad told me that once. And not only that, I thought, you can make a better shield.  
  
My head didn't hurt anymore, but only throbbed, mainly because of my own shame. I had an all-consuming fear that the thing would explode forward, larger than ever and all eyes would suddenly be on me. I would shrink from their sight, flee into an alley and never return to the accusing eyes of the daylight. I swallowed and I felt the scratchiness of my throat, the emptiness of my stomach. I don't know how long it had been since I last ate. And I must have sweated enough to drown myself. Even the hidden have needs.  
  
It was about half a block to where I usually ate. Not because the food was particularly good, but mainly because it was close. It was early, but it would be open. It always seemed to be open whenever I saw it. I guess that's something comforting about it. Something stable, at least. So early in the day, the city was only starting its climb to peak. Traffic was already becoming heavy, on the streets and on the sidewalks. More and more people entered with each building I passed. By the time I had finished the walk, the city was starting to look more like a city. Almost as if I had just imagined it being empty. The city never sleeps. It dozes.  
  
I remember me and Aya would climb out my window, laughing, and sit on the ledge, looking down on our domain, our kingdom. It's that feeling you get looking down on the world that it's all yours. As far as you can see is your empire. Lapped at lovingly by tainted waters, wrapped in a sickly glowing cloak of sky. We watched, enamored, as more and more of our subjects flooded out into the streets, brushing aside the night-walkers, the little flames that thrived in the darkness, blotting out the night as the dawn rose mightily on the horizon.  
  
I felt that familiar little biting pain in my stomach. Aya always told me to look on the brighter side of things. Well, at least I had a name for my next ulcer.  
  
The diner was a tiny little hole in the grave face of the city. A little remnant of something wholesome and culturally significant. At least, it used to be. It had, at one time, attempted to be something like a throwback to the '70s, with a real, working jukebox and waitresses in Technicolor outfits. Now, though, the black-and-white checkered paint was peeling, the jukebox was broken and dusty and the waitresses weren't paid enough to wear anything special. The greatest thing about it, though, was that it was going in a rapid downward spiral. No one came in anymore. It was perfect.  
  
I sat down and was almost immediately attended to by a woman who just might have been a typical '70s waitress thirty years ago. Now her skin was wrinkled and her teeth almost glowed yellow from years of stale tobacco I smelled on her breath. I ordered and sat, tracing patterns on the peeling faux marble of the table. Marble was supposed to be ten degrees cooler than the temperature around it. I leaned forward and put my face to the surface. It smelled of mildew and wood. The surface was warmed by the glaring electric light that hovered uncertainly above me. I turned my head unconsciously, so that the center of my forehead touched the solid surface. Instantly, I winced and jerked back, putting my hand to my bandage. Not to soothe the pain, but to make sure the fragile fabric was still holding strong.  
  
My food appeared as if by magic at the end of a yellowish arm, veins like dark rivers on the wrinkled map of her skin. I muttered something that resembled a thank you, but the waitress was already gone. The smell of old tobacco lingered for a while afterwards, masking the smell of the hamburger and fries that sat, sparkling with grease and salt, in front of me. I sighed as I stared at it, reminded about just how hungry I wasn't. The radio was playing some blend of music and static, and the door dinged hopefully once or twice. The owner of the place was staring at me, even though I pretended not to notice. It wasn't too strange, I suppose. I was probably the first customer that wasn't a junky or dressed in drag that he had in a while. But I did have a bandage on my head.  
  
Suddenly the smell of smoke was wiped away, and the smell of gasoline and sweat came in so strong I wrinkled my nose instinctively.  
  
"A hamburger and fries, eh?" Something made a scoffing noise to my left. "How horribly American of you."  
  
The voice made my body tighten suddenly, though I didn't know why. A slender, pale-skinned hand reached out and daintily grabbed one of my fries, drawing it away from the rest with a flourish and dipping it lightly in the gob of ketchup set on the edge of the plate. The owner of the arm swooped lightly into the seat across from me, and I slowly raised my lowered head to gaze in awe at the woman.  
  
Her lips moved like snakes, her smile like the blade of a knife. A pair of pale yellow-green eyes glittered like windows into a smog-filled sky set in the smooth perfection of her face, which was framed by pale pink like a ripening peach. Two rows of gleaming white teeth tore the head off of the fry, her sleek lips wrapping around it as it disappeared with a few quick lashings of her tongue. The hand sank and dipped the fry into my ketchup once again, swirling it about as she smiled silently at my awestruck expression.  
  
"Y-you." I breathed the word.  
  
The woman smiled wider and pointed the blood-soaked, jagged tip of her fry at me. "Yep. M- me." 


	8. Haruko Haruraba

I swallowed, trying to put together my words, trying to rearrange my thoughts, scattered by the her glittering feline eyes, her dangerously perfect face. "Wha-how-wha-?"  
  
She mimicked me, her eyes going wide as we jerked our faces closer together with each stuttered word. An inch away now, I could feel the heat of her face and see the sharp edges of each sparkle her eyes gave off. She smiled warmly, her eyelids half-closing seductively. "This is where you indignantly ask 'Who the hell are you?'"  
  
I pulled back violently and scowled at her. "Who the hell are you?" I demanded indignantly. My expression lost its strength as I realized I had done exactly what she said.  
  
The woman leaned back and put one leg up on the seat of the booth, the sleek black pants ending in tight white boots, both gleaming like her eyes in the pale yellow light. "Haruko Haruraba. Nice to meet you." She tossed the fry up into the air and snatched it out of the air with her teeth, which might as well have been fangs. She then held her hand out for me to take.  
  
I made no move to take the hand. I folded my arms over my chest and glowered at her. "You're the one from that night."  
  
She tilted her head, giving me a puzzled look as her eyes traced a path over the sharp edges of my face. "What night?"  
  
I averted my eyes, focusing on a single black tile on the floor. "That was the night that."  
  
Her smile spread like a bloodstain and her head bobbed excitedly. "Yes?"  
  
"That you.that I."  
  
She gripped the table and leaned still closer. "Yeees?" Her eyes were swirling and sparkling.  
  
"That you." I growled and turned back to glare at her. "You hit me with that.thing."  
  
"You mean this?" With one swift motion she reached behind her and pulled out a blur of blue that she dropped bodily on the table. The guitar landed with a crack on my plate, the glass of it shattering and the food lost somewhere beneath the polished exterior.  
  
I jumped back and gazed in shock, not so much because of the sudden demise of my hamburger, but because the weapon had appeared out of nowhere and now lay idle and harmless before me. I shot a quick glance over to the owner of the diner to see if he noticed, but he was busy gazing fixedly at Haruko's legs. A low grumble rattled through the body of the guitar as it lay there, and I felt that same grumble echoed through me, making me shiver in tune.  
  
"Yeah.that'd be it." I swallowed and looked up at her. Her smile expanded dramatically, the clean white teeth gleaming with an almost painful brightness. "Who are you, really?"  
  
She stretched herself out elegantly, her long, slender body stretching out enticingly before me. "I already told you."  
  
I closed my eyes and sighed heavily. "No, I mean." I stopped. What did I mean? It was as if there were too many questions in my head for me to ask anything at all. Here, in front of me was the attacker and her weapon. Here, I was faced with something real, something finally proving to me that I wasn't dreaming. And that I wasn't about to wake up. I opened my eyes. "You hit me, right?"  
  
The girl, Haruko, snatched another fry and tossed it easily into her mouth. I almost swore I saw her mouth extend to fit the length of it. She swallowed and grinned. "Yessir."  
  
I nodded. "Okay. Why?"  
  
She shrugged and turned her head to gaze thoughtfully at the splotch of light thrown upon the drab wallpaper by the bulb above. "Why does it matter?" Her eyes flicked to lock with mine again with a movement that reminded me of a blade flashing in the light. "Did something happen?" The left corner of her mouth twisted upward sickeningly.  
  
Instinctively, my hand fingered my bandage and I turned my eyes away. "No," I defiantly met her stare again, "It's just not everyday someone chases me down with a guitar and hits me with it."  
  
Her small nose shivered slightly as she sniffed. "Would you rather me just pass you by without saying a word and never see you again?" I had to admit, she had me there. Rather than admit defeat, I simply folded my arms and looked away. She simply smiled that knife-smile and continued. "So.what's under that bandage, then? A bump?"  
  
Something about those eyes, the way they sparkled at the end of her sentence made me think that those weren't questions, but statements. Like she knew the answer. I examined the expression carefully. The woman wasn't exactly the most trustworthy person. "What do you know about it?"  
  
The look didn't falter for a second. It seemed almost as though her mouth didn't even move over the words she spoke. As if I was imagining them, not hearing them. "About what?"  
  
I narrowed my eyes slightly. "You did this to me."  
  
"Did what?"  
  
I pointed stiffly at the bandage on my forehead. "This."  
  
"What's that?"  
  
"You know damn well." I hissed.  
  
"Remind me." She cooed.  
  
"No." I growled.  
  
"Tell me." Her voice was the embrace of flesh around the blade of knife.  
  
"I don't need to." My voice shook.  
  
"You want to."  
  
"No."  
  
"You know you do"  
  
"No!"  
  
"Just tell me-"  
  
"NO!"  
  
"What's under the bandage, Tama?"  
  
I stood up with a sudden flash of motion, the table wobbling dangerously from the sudden change. My head throbbed viciously, and I felt a rage well up like wildfire inside me, charring my insides ash black. "NO!" I screamed, my voice echoing like a thunderclap off the walls of the diner. All present looked up at me. The waitress, nostrils smoking gently, the manager, who had managed to tear his eyes away from Haruko's sleek, hairless leg, and the one other customer, who warmed himself desperately over a small cup of coffee like it was his last hope of survival. And, of course, the mystery woman, Haruko, who simply smiled her knife-edge smile, gazed with her eyes, little sparkling jewels of pollution.  
  
I looked from one face to another, smoke, anger, melancholy, satisfaction. I was the center of attention again. I let out a low growl and without another word pushed myself away from the table and stormed my way towards the door. But at the doorway, Haruko called after me.  
  
"Watch your head."  
  
And I was gone. 


	9. The Children Still Run

Dreams run through my mind like two children on a Friday afternoon. Running like the prospect of a full weekend through the minds of those children. Running like the wind through their hair, full, clean, shimmering. The last bell of the last period of what seemed like a little eternity rang in their ears as they sprinting towards freedom, towards the unknown. Running free into the falling sun that sat solemn on its throne of choking smog. The air was clean to them, though, the tingle of freedom made everything taste better. Even the sweat that made their bodies shimmer as though for that moment, they were made of something greater than flesh. That, too, tasted of victory.  
  
They ran through the halls, and out into the street. Other kids, struggling against the weight of their bookbags on their spirits leapt out of the way or were knocked aside. The runners' bookbags bobbed uselessly, clinging desperately to their backs, unable to weigh them down, unable to stop them. They smiled against the yells, against the pains and against the world. The city parted like an ocean before them. They dodged in and out of the crowd, slipping like ghosts through the melancholy mind and body and soul of it.  
  
And the river drew ever closer, the edge of the world. The children ran towards it, as if pulled by those murky, unclear depths, as if each wave beckoned towards them, each tortured finger of unclean water urged them onward. The sweat trailed like diamonds behind them and the steady drum of their feet on the sidewalk echoed through their minds. Until at last they met with the edge, cold and unyielding. And only then did they stop, laughing between heavy breaths, smiling into the sparkle of a hundred sunken jewels in the river.  
  
Dark-haired, panting, sweating, content. The children gazed out into the water. Then gazed into each other's eyes, still smiling, still free.  
  
"I won." The girl would say, smirking.  
  
"Did not." The boy would protest, scowling.  
  
The girl would scowl back. "Liar! You were WAY slow!"  
  
"Was not!"  
  
"Were too!"  
  
"Was not. Was not!"  
  
"Were too times infinity!"  
  
"Was not times infinity plus one!"  
  
"Were too times infinity plus whatever you can say." She would put her hands on her hips and strike a proud pose, gleaming there like some goddess statue. "Ha!"  
  
"Zero." The boy would smirk.  
  
The girl would sigh and turn back towards the river, letting the sky paint the pale canvas of her face the colors of the sunset. "Fine. It's a tie."  
  
The boy would nod in satisfaction and turn to face the water, leaning forward on folded arms. They would stay like that for a while, motionless, as the twin tides of humanity and water passed them by without notice. Then the boy would turn to look at the girl. He would watch her for a while, looking as though he was about to speak before turning back to the water. Then he would speak, "So what are we going to do tonight?"  
  
And the girl would be ready. "The same thing we always do." And with that, she would leap over the wall, disappearing suddenly as though she had just been a figment of the world's imagination. And at that time, there wasn't anything the boy wanted to do more than follow.  
  
I awoke with start. My throat was so dry I worried that if I moved my mouth, it would crumble. Still, I was drowning in my own sweat. I found that kind of ironic. Either my body was trying to drown itself or simply dry itself out. Until it was like a mummy. Hollow, dry, brittle. Except I wasn't an ancient king. I was one of the poor Egyptian slaves that died unmourned and unburied.  
  
My head still throbbed. I turned to look at the clock across the room, its blazing electric red numbers like some animal's eyes glaring at me out of the pseudo-darkness of my bedroom. Six fifty-five pm. My hand moved on its own to scratch the spot that throbbed behind the flimsy cotton boundary of the bandage. My sweat-slickened hair was plastered down over it, managing to conceal it for the most part. I turned away from the clock for only a second before my head suddenly snapped back so I could gaze, wide-eyed at those red-hot numbers.  
  
"Shit!" My voice was a cross between a hiss and a croak, but I didn't even notice. The words had barely left my mouth before I was up, frantically tearing into my closets and my dresser to find clothes. I had forgotten about my meeting with Aya. When I got home, all I could think of was the woman, Haruko, and the throbbing in my head that felt as though someone were pushing to get out. Aya, for the first time in a long time, had been lost from my thoughts. Seven o'clock. Café Gazo.  
  
Dressed now, I glared in frustration at my reflection. My hair was still wet with sweat, my white t-shirt maintaining the pattern of folds I had put into it, and my pants looking something like a crumpled paper bag. My eyes were reddened and gleamed dully in the rising moonlight, like wet marbles. I wondered whether or not me glaring at the reflection would somehow make it transform into something cleaner, something presentable, something less like a corpse. But the longer a stared, the later I was and the worse I seemed to look. With a final sigh of defeat, I dashed out the door and out into the street.  
  
Café Gazo wasn't far from my apartment. A few blocks, maybe. It was one of those small-time café-on-the-corner sort of places. Constantly filled with college students and young hipsters. Cafés are sort of the malls of the more artistic crowd. Where people can gather and be just as pretentious as the people around them and thus feel they belong through mutual distaste for humanity. The watering hole of the human world. It was equipped with very modern design, the dark greens and the earth tones that one would expect to be served coffee in. Mass-produced furniture made to look hand-made, and a sort of mellow, soft lighting. It was a café like any other café. Full of people that looked at you over their books of poetry and art with a practiced subtly. This is why I preferred my little diner.  
  
When I entered, my eyes instantly found Aya. Aya wasn't one to blend in, even in this environment. Aya with hair like spun onyx, with eyes like the dark waters of our river, with skin smooth and clear as milk and a body curved, not like a blade, because her curves had no edges to them. Her hair was shoulder-length again, and her nails were painted bright red. She wore a knee-length black skirt with frilled ends and a long sleeved white shirt with a row of buttons down the middle. One white hand clutched the bottom of the book she read, the other was wrapped gently around the handle of her cup. Gentle waves of faint steam wafted calmly from it, as if her hand warmed it on its own.  
  
As soon as the door closed behind me, her eyes snapped up and locked with mine. I felt my head spasm and prattle violently, as if she had just stabbed me with her look. Her eyes were as tight as the rose-red of her lips. I swallowed and approached her. She made no movement, her eyes never leaving mine. I stopped a foot from her black sandal. She glared at me for a few moments before parting the flawless rose-red of her lips.  
  
"You're late." 


	10. Aya Furihame

((By the way, thanks to everyone who left me good reviews. And thanks to the people that left me bad ones. It's good to see that my story is good enough to have bad reviews.))  
  
Those smooth white roots, crossed over one another, hiding the secrets between them deep with a double-layer of shadow. Her body was tight, uninviting, unforgiving. Her eyes, those ones I had seen so warm, so bright, so irresistible, were like black ice. That ice that blends with the rest of the dark road so you never see it coming. But it makes you lose your hold on the ground, makes you swerve and weave. Makes you fly off the road to be torn to nothing by the unforgiving trunks of trees with crossed roots.  
  
This was Aya. "Sorry." My heart fluttered. "I overslept."  
  
She continued glaring. "It's seven o'clock at night, Tama. You don't sleep that late."  
  
I shook my head. "I'm sorry. What else do you want me to say?"  
  
I waited, almost holding my breath to see if she'd stand up and walk out. I'd been late before. She'd done it before. Without a word, she had risen, broke the silent exchange of our eyes and stormed out the door like a sudden angry gust of wind. Finally, she sighed and turned her glare to the dark green linoleum on the floor. Her hand pried itself from the handle of her cup and she gestured to a seat across the table. "Take a seat."  
  
I did as I was told, leaning back in my chair. I tried my best to act careless, the kind of emotionless cold she wasn't. As cold as she was, there was a heat of emotion to it. I wanted to do better. I was emotionless. I was stone. I sniffed. "So how have you been?"  
  
Without looking at me, she sipped her coffee. "I've been good." Her gaze wandered from face to face, black strands of hair puncturing the perfect white mask of her face. "How about you?"  
  
"Can't complain." This was our conversation. If we weren't arguing, we didn't exactly know what to say to each other. These were scripted answers. These were answers we'd seen on TV. Conversation: As seen on TV. I almost burst out laughing. "You look nice."  
  
"You think so?" It wasn't a question. Her voice, the smooth, sultry tone of it, hadn't changed. If anything, it had grown somewhat deeper, somewhat fuller. It had grown a sexual undertone. She knew what being a woman meant now, and it came out in her voice.  
  
"Still working for the newspaper?" Of course she was. Things never change.  
  
"Of course." She blew absently on her coffee, her red lips forming an almost perfect "O". Brown waves moved slowly across the surface of the drink. "You still working for the post office?"  
  
It was a game. Which of us would crack first. "Yeah. Still."  
  
"Good to know things haven't changed much."  
  
I couldn't take it anymore. I let out a low growl of frustration. "Aya, why did you even say we should meet? You've got nothing to say and I've got less." My hands shook violently and my voice held more anger than I had intended.  
  
Still, she didn't even give me a glance. "That's nothing new, is it?" Her voice hadn't lost a single drop of cool.  
  
Mine, on the other hand. "You just have to be a smartass about it, don't you?"  
  
She sniffed. "And it's nothing new that we're ending up fighting. It's a nice little script we've got going."  
  
I felt my hands tighten into fists. I knew what I was about to say I would regret. I knew it would be the start of a whole new sequence of nightmares. I would reenact it again and again in my sleep. "Nothing's ever new when it comes to you."  
  
The coffee cup slammed hard against the polished surface of the table. The brown liquid exploded upward and scattered fragments of itself all across the smooth dark green around it. A few drops splattered against her clear white skin, but she didn't even flinch. Her expression showed that her insides were hotter than the coffee. Her eyes burned like black coals and her face was twisted into a scowl that turned my angry heart to ice.  
  
When she spoke, her voice quivered as violently as her body. "And that's so important?" Her fists were so tight I wondered if her nails were digging into her hands. Her voice raised as she spoke, and people began to lower their poetry and their philosophy and their foreign language books, turning to the woman that yelled despite the attention, that shouted despite the world. "Well, guess what, Tama. If you think your life's going to suddenly change and you're suddenly going to become a different person, you've got another thing coming. We don't live a different life each day. We live with as much variety as we can squeeze into our lives, and wanting any more is fantasy. The more you believe it, the more miserable you will become when it doesn't come true. And it won't. Believe me, Tama. It won't."  
  
And with that, she flew from the table, her words echoing off of every corner of the café, the sound of the bell on the door dwarfed by the words. It was as if she disappeared. It was as if she was just part of a dream. As if this was one of my nightmares.  
  
I shook off the shock and flew after her, the whole café watching me as I left. And as the door dinged shut again, the alternative, mellow tones of the background music took over the atmosphere again. Tones that said, "Forget about it. Go back to your lives. I will always be here. Nothing will change so much that I will ever disappear."  
  
The city was full of dark forms, but none of them were Aya. It was like I was surrounded by black fire that moved and shifted and pushed me out of the way. My head throbbed savagely. I watched the ring of black draw closer and closer, until it threatened to strangle me, until it threatened to hold me still until the life left my body. And all at once a thought popped into my head.  
  
My feet switched into gear and I was off. The black fires of the city-hell parted to let me through, muttering and cursing with words I couldn't hear. I ran. My body knew exactly what to do, exactly what to think like this. When I ran again, my life had purpose and the world swept by in a hurricane of lights. My feet beat the ground and that was the only sound I needed. A steady drumbeat like an army marching to war. All that was me was bent to one purpose, which drew ever closer.  
  
The wall that hugged the river was barren. The sidewalk that supplicated itself at the feet of that wall was dark and silent. It was that time of night where the sun was gone behind an unforgiving horizon and the electric streetlights flickered to life. The night was their time to shine. A million little electric stars couldn't match the sun's light. All they could do was shed fat yellow teardrops that splattered in a fuzzy pool below them. The streetlights were like people. Bent forward, crying onto themselves.  
  
And between those pools was Aya. Deep in the black between the lights I could see her. Leaning out over the wall, looking into the night that covered the swirling expanse of the river. My run slowed to a jog and then to a walk and then to a stop. I was about four feet away from her. The wind howled between us, chilling and angry. Somewhere in that wind was her sigh, mournful, shallow.  
  
"Tama." She turned. Her white shirt was darkened at points from her sweat, her hair was tangled and fell in black slivers over her face and blended with the deep shadow of her eyes. Her eyes, which moved like the river under the night sky. And shined like the moon reflected brilliantly in the waves, "You followed me again." She sniffed. "How predictable."  
  
The bite of the irony in her voice was physical. It was real. "I can't just let you go like that."  
  
Her eyes tightened and narrowed until they were glaring black slits with moonlit edges. "You did before."  
  
"I." Try as I might, I couldn't defend myself. My head throbbed all thought away.  
  
Her steps echoed painfully off the walls of my head, fractured my skull. We were an inch apart. The wind blew wildly, ripped through the space between us. Her eyes locked with mine and I felt like I would double over with pain. "This is your fault, Tama."  
  
And with that, she turned and stormed away. My hand shot out too late. All I felt was the air settle back into place after she disturbed it. I watched her dash into the shadow, consumed by the black flames of the city's nighttime inferno. The inferno electric lights did nothing to combat.  
  
I collapsed to my knees. The pavement ground into my legs, gouging through the skin. But I didn't feel the pain. All I could feel was the throbbing, which had turned to a pounding. And each pound sent a shockwave of pain through my body until I begged through the pain for a god or anyone to send me unconscious. It felt like someone was rattling the cage of my mind, trying to tear it to pieces. Like someone was trying to get out. Like something was trying to free itself. Like there was something in my head.  
  
And it was about to come out. 


	11. The First Machine

((Apparently someone has way too much time in their hands and put a bunch of reviews on my story bitching about how bad I am. That's kinda pathetic. But no biggie, that's why the delete key was invented, eh heh. Sorry for the delay...there'll probably be more. But, I have another story I'm working on for the Cowboy Bebop fans out Check it out, if you feel like it.))  
  
The pain got worse. Each throb was like the beating of someone else's heart, pushing against my fragile, fleshy frame. I felt as though I was expanding, as though I were growing, or as though something were growing inside of me. More than an emotion, more than just that tortured tearing feeling that usually accompanied the sight of Aya running from me. It was physical.  
  
Through my pain, I saw something that looked like a white butterfly, something that sailed on the waves of my pain, blurred as it floated slowly towards the ground. And only then did I see it was my bandage. The bump on my forehead erupted like a shot, flinging me to the ground with a thud that seemed far away. I was floating away, like a broken shard of wood in the ocean, and everything seemed to echo as if I was in the middle of a great hall. My body detached itself from the pain of the physical world.  
  
And all at once I was pulled right back. My eyes went wide as I watched and felt the bump move and shift, morph and grow, lengthen to the point that it touched the ground past my feet. It smashed against the sidewalk, a lump of my flesh flowing like water across the inky black of the street. And that was it. Something inside of me just snapped and I let out a scream I could hear even through my daze. I finally had found my voice and I used it. The scream bounded almost gleefully off buildings and into the distance, echoing in waves I could see moving across the liquid surface of my vision.  
  
I heard a sickly ripping sound as my distended skin broke against the hard road. I watched, my awe finally winning through my pain as a gleaming metallic fist burst forth, punching through the fragile fabric of my body.  
  
"I'm dreaming," I thought, the world struggling to stay afloat in my mind, "I'm dreaming again. It's a dream...this can't happen."  
  
The fist was followed by an arm at least twice as thick as my body, emerging smoothly through the massive hole torn in the skin that had grown to at least double my body size, flapping and shifting as the metallic arm emerged. What followed was hidden by shadow and tore the mass of flesh into several jagged strips and flung me to the ground with the force of it leaping forth into a world whose rules savagely denied its existence.  
  
When I finally opened my eyes, the torn, stretched, battered skin was gone, as was the bump. When I finally opened my eyes, all that was left of what had seemed so real was a dull throb, a faint headache and an itch on my forehead. I blinked a few times to make sure that if I closed and opened my eyes again, I wouldn't suddenly be transported back into my nightmare. Satisfied, I pushed myself into a sitting position. I was about to let out a sigh when it suddenly caught in my throat at the sight that awaited me.  
  
There, in front of me, was some sort of massive machine, towering over me, bathing me in a shadow that permitted no moonlight. The body of it was V-shaped, ending in a rounded tip from which sprouted hundreds of tiny spider-like metal legs, each outlined sharply by the moonlight behind. From the body sprouted two thick, heavy metal arms, which ended in huge metal fists, with individual fingers designed like smoothed-out versions of my own. They pressed against the ground, holding the beast upright as it glared at me through a single long bar planted somewhere in the upper part of the machine's middle. It glowed with electric fire. Even if it couldn't feel anger, the one slit managed it better than I ever could. 


End file.
